for the most intimate picnic setting. avoid all tourist cars by hopping on the cable car. or the 30, 45, 41 or 91 bus. this is the place to tell someone something special or the place to declare to friends and family the commitment you two share. reservations are available with rec and park for this adorable >> good morning, everyone. thank you for being here. you know, as we look through this year, there's obviously some incredible events that have occurred. and for me as mayor of san francisco, i know that the chief and i and supervisor cohen and dr. campbell and the whole public health staff have always had dialogue and been concerned especially when there

is an uptick in june of this year on violent crime and homicides in san francisco. and, so, we've been working together on creating a program which i announced some months ago, the ipo program, the ability to work on things that would interrupt and intervene earlier in the behavior patterns of people that would be both victims and perpetrators of violent crime in our city. to support the police department and law enforcement system of doing more predictive policing using both data and technology to help us do that. and then, of course, i think the most important part is to organize our communities and work with community-based organizations, families, religious groups, and everybody that's on the ground to find more ways to intervene in violent behavior out there and utilize resources such as

education systems, our community jobs programs, others that might allow people to go in different direction. the unfortunate and very tragic incident in connecticut in sandy hook elementary school of course heightened everybody's awareness of what violence can really be all about. and as we have been not only responding, reacting to this national tragedy that i think president obama has adequately described as broken all of our hearts, and in every funeral that has taken place, for those 20 innocent children and six innocent adults in the school districts, and school administrators, we obviously have shared in that very tragic event, all of us. it has touched everybody across this country. san francisco is no different.

and i have shared that emotional experience with the supervisor and everybody here, in our law enforcement, and in our health department as well. the question for us, then, is what do we do about it? and not only can we share in this tragedy and signal our sympathies to the families as we've done, but we've got to do something more. and this is where i want to make sure i recognize all of the people that are in that effort of doing something about it, including the officials in san francisco. and some have been at this longer than others to try to do something about it, have reached limitations. yet again, i think this tragedy at sandy hook reminds us that we've got to keep trying and we've got to keep doing more about it. and, so, i want to first of all

recognize that senator feinstein, in my conversations with her, and the tragedies she's experienced as mayor of san francisco as well as her attempts to ban assault weapons and had done so in the past, and that her federal assault legislation, while ended, she will reintroduce that in january and we will be big supporters of that. and she will continue dialoguing on a national level, and we will support her efforts and the efforts of all of our federal officials to do more, along with the president of the united states and congress to act. and, in fact, i joined over 750 other mayors across this country, using social media and the technology that's available to us today to signal a demand to our congress that we really need a plan and a plan and an action to follow that, to ban these assault weapons and to make sure that we do everything we can to create a higher level

of safety throughout the country. assault weapons and the types of things that we've seen in the hands of people who are doing evil or can do evil really have no place, in the home or in the schools or in our streets. and, so, with that we ask ourselves what we can do locally. i also want to recognize the three state senators, senator de leon, state senator leland yee and state senator ted gains, all three of which are sponsoring some five different pieces of state legislation aimed at banning assault weapons and munitions, getting higher levels of background checks and registries, and also i think senator gains is attempting to also make sure that those that have backgrounds of mental health challenges are lifetime bans of possessing these weapons.

again, in an attempt to do what we can. in san francisco, we tried to ban assault weapons some years ago. we were unsuccessful in the courts in being able to do so. we are going to renew these efforts in light of the sandy hook sentiment and i know there's just a higher level of sentiment that causes us to focus even more on what we can do locally. in fact, this higher level of sentiment, as you'll hear from the police chief, has even caused one of the highest rates of gun return. certainly we paid some money for that, but he's going to tell you there are some individuals out there, in light of sandy hook, that returned their guns and without even asking for remuneration of those guns. and he'll explain that level of detail. but it was the highest level of gun return this past weekend that we were honored to share with our community partners in making sure that we get these guns off the streets.

two pieces of legislation that we are introducing to the board of supervisors with the support of our police chief, our health department, and certainly being led by supervisor cohen whose district has experienced an inordinate amount of violence throughout this year. we talk about it all the time. what can we do? for one, the ammunition that has been designed especially by law enforcement for military use has no reason to be in our homes and on our streets. and, so, we are introducing legislation focused on what has been labeled to be the hollow point bullets, but there are other types of bullets that are designed for more massive destruction of the human body that should only be in the hands of law enforcement and the military, and not in the civilian hands at all. and we want to ban them from

possession in our city of san francisco. so, we're introducing legislation aimed at that kind of ballistics ammunition and banning them from possession in our city. the second piece of legislation is we believe that any person who purchases more than 500 rounds of any type of ammunition, notice should go to our police chief so that we have time to investigate as to reasons why that purchase should be made and understand who is making it. so, we are introducing a second piece of legislation about notification to our police chief of any of that kind of high level of purchase. these are at least two things that we are introducing today. there are potentially more to come, but we wanted to begin by taking action on this. and i stand here in front of you with a full display of some

of the armory that was collected, turned in by people with the incentive of providing them with some remuneration of these weapons that were in their homes or other types of possession of this. and, of course, some of the ammunition that we will let you see that is not just body piercing, but designed to even be even more destructive. that's the reason why i have dr. campbell here. there have been many occasions, doctor, that i've been very thankful for you and your expert way of treating our patients whether firefighters or police officers are injured. but he has seen more than he should ever see of young -- youth who are victims of these bullets and the guns that we are talking about today. and he wants to explain the human side of this with our public health department officials. but i'd like to have further

testimony by supervisor cohen of her experience and her leadership in helping me establish this. i will want to again put it in context that our city wants to intervene at an earlier stage. we want to do predictive policing. we want to support efforts throughout our community to organize them better so that we can prevent violence. this was at the heart of our work, introducing more support for our domestic violence advocates as well that we did just a few weeks ago. that with the heightened awareness of guns and the kinds of things that happen nationally, this is consistent with what we're willing to do. so, let me introduce at this time a good partner and the one that will be introducing this at the board, supervisor malia cohen. >> thank you. thank you, mr. mayor, for your leadership. and chief, thank you for your

continuing efforts to be a tremendous advocate and partner. and our collective effort to address gun violence in our city. as the mayor mentioned, the tragic event that occurred at sandy hook elementary school last week was truly horrifying. and painful for all of us to sit back and witness. but i'm here today not to speak of last week's events in connecticut, but i'm here today because of the phone calls that i regularly get from many of the police officers that are here in this room today in the middle of the night. department officers informing me and alerting me of the violent shootings that are happening right here in our own neighborhood. i'm here today because i have personally visited too many families as they grieve the loss of loved ones, largely due to gun violence. i'm here today because of the time that i've spent at general hospital consoling innocent victims of gun violence, some as young as five years old. i'm here because we have to do more and use every legislative

and executive power that are available to us to continue to address the causes as well as the impacts of senseless gun violence occurring in our neighborhoods. now, what we know is that many of the shootings that are occurring are increasingly involving young adults under the age of 25 years old. they are often related to disputes over turf and status and they're fueled by the fact that it's easy to obtain -- too easy to obtain and possess military style assault weapons and hollow point ammunition. as you will hear today from dr. campbell, thea hollow type ammunition especially [speaker not understood] to victims because the ammunition is designed to expand and shred an individual's internal organs upon impact, making it nearly impossible for a medical professional to repair and save lives. last week i had the pleasure of joining the police department as well as our community partner the omega boys club

headed by dr. joe marshall and one of the most successful gun buy back programs. we collected approximately 2 96 guns off the street, 300 we were able to get guns off of out of hands of folks. not just in the southeast neighborhood, but all across san francisco. and i think we have a collective understanding that there is a growing awareness on the part of san franciscans about the need to do more to address gun violence and to believe -- and i believe that there is a desire for us as elected officials to take greater steps in implementing institutional solutions to these issues. * these weapons and this ammunition over here to my right don't belong in the hands of san francisco and online suppliers, online suppliers have an obligation to disclose to law enforcement officers information about residents buying large amounts of this lethal ammunition. i just want to say thank you for being here.

i look forward to introducing this legislation. as soon as we hit the ground running in january. i appreciate your support, mr. mayor, and i look forward to continuing to working together. thank you. * >> thank you, supervisor. chief has been a great partner in not only law enforcement, with ideas of what else we could do. * chief sur i'm going to ask the chief to come up and talk about why we need to ban this ammunition, what it takes to create a system where we have reporting of individuals or entities that might want to buy 500 rounds of ammunition, and why it's important that that get reported. in addition to the very successful gun buy back that supervisor cohen had mentioned, there's also other things that we are doing as well. i have instructed chief sur to make sure we introduce to the new cadets in the police academy as well as retrain

every officer in our police department on school safety tactics in light of the sandy hook elementary school disaster. and he's going to do that. it's already begun. the curriculum is being designed for that. that's as important, making sure that we work in concert with our school district to make sure every campus is safe. that means school safety tactics have always been around, gets a refreshed training by everyone. chief suhr. >> thank you, mr. mayor. i want to start off by reassuring everybody that what you saw play out on television, however unimaginable it was, that the heroism and the courage of the teachers at that school and the actions of the officers to respond directly in was a product of training after the columbine incident in colorado. across this country, all law enforcement agencies have been trained not to wait when there

is an active shooter, but to go in immediately. and you actually saw that play out on television. and i think that for them doing that coupled with the fact that the teachers did as they were trained, and secured in place versus evacuating those kids into the hallways, had what is a horrific tragedy as far as it went, being far less than it might have been as a result of that training. as the mayor said here in san francisco, we have also trained to that standard. and as we're going through a high right now where we'll pick up a thousand police officers over the next six years, they, too, will be trained to that standard. * hire we've developed a crisis management handbook that's online and the link has been sent to every school in san francisco so that they can refresh their training on secure in place. there is a time to evacuate and then there's a time to stay put, wait as it was said in the media, to wait for the good guys. so, they did that in sandy hook and it saved lives. we will do that exact same

thing should that event happen at any point in san francisco, and we're going to train so that that's the case for as long into the future as we can see to keep our kids safe. i, like supervisor cohen, want to applaud the mayor's leadership on this, to identify the most lethal ammunition, and to have allow the citizens to allow the police department to maintain the database. being the first city in the country to make that ammunition illegal as you will hear later, dr. campbell from probably the best trauma ward in the country will tell you what that ammunition does to people when they are hit by it. and then, again, to ask for a reporting on people that purchase as much or more as 500 rounds of ammunition so we cannot only track those people that are buying ammunition, but frequency of purchase as you can stockpile that ammunition. it is not going to be the --

any sort of suspension of the constitution. this is just smart, thoughtful community coming together with law enforcement so we know what people are doing and a simple question can be asked and if it's for target practice, that's fine as long as it's not the most lethal ammunition. the leadership in this country, you know, we've been divided for a while over small ideas and now we're coming together unfortunately after this tragedy over a big idea. and that's gun control. can't tell you how much the major city police chiefs of this country support the mayor. senator feinstein, congress, state senators, and mayors like mayor lee that we're fortunate to have, on gun control. senator feinstein will re-submit the assault weapons ban which bans 100 specific assault rifles, including the weapon used in sandy hook and high-capacity magazines of 10 rounds or more.

there's other things that we as major city chiefs would like to see happen, such as the banning of internet ammo sales. we'd like to see in-person transactions. the record of sales and licensing of ammo vendors, and other things i can talk to you about off line. we are doing everything we can to make san francisco a safer place and reduce violent crime. the mayor spoke of ipo, which he introduced at the very beginning of august. and for the first august in memory and maybe even on record, we suffered zero homicides in that month. unfortunately one homicide in the city is too many. we've had 67 this year to date, which is up over the last couple years, record low. still the best we've had in 10 years absent those record lows. gun violence is down 4% in san francisco. largely because of community partnership. things like our gun tip line

which i'll give you, 575-4444 and things like the gun buy back program. if you don't think that one of these guns or any of the other 2 96 * guns that were recovered here of the 300 guns that chief howard jordan and youth uprising were able to get over there weren't going to fall into the hands of somebody that might use them, you're betting against the odds. the shooter in newtown, connecticut, got those guns from his home, legally purchased firearms. we took 2 96 guns off the street here thankful to dr. joe marshall and omega boys club. over 150 handguns, almost 150 rifles and shotguns, these are not what people keep saying aren't going to make a difference. this is absolutely making a difference. and i would say to the nra or anybody that says, hey, this isn't the problem, if it's not

the problem, it will make a difference, it should make a difference banning them. let's err on the side of caution, keep the kids safe. thank you. >> let me also echo again my appreciation for commissioner dr. joe marshall because omega boys club has been a great partner. they are part of our effort to organize commutes, to intervene as early as we can, and i totally agree with the chief that these particular guns, if you look at them up front and close, you'll see they really shouldn't be in anybody's homes. they're designed to kill folks. many of them military style. i think to bring home the real story here is dr. andrei campbell of our san francisco general hospital, and also on staff at ucsf. he is at the forefront of world class trauma center that we have. and if you go day to day, and certainly with the 67 homicides that we have with the numbers

of bodies that were showing up and people have shown up, many of which he saved, many of which he couldn't save that were victims of bullets and violence and gun violence in our city, you know that that's another good reason as to why we need to do as much prevention as we can. dr. campbell. >> good afternoon, mayor lee, supervisor cohen, chief suhr, members of the press. my name is dr. andrei campbell and i've worked at san francisco general hospital for the past 19 years as a trauma surgeon. before i came to san francisco i worked in new york. i have 24 years of experience of caring for victims in two major cities in our great country. this week all of us have watched with horror the events in newtown, connecticut, with great sadness as we learned the devastation that one person brought on that quiet community. i've seen the devastation that

guns have visited on victims of crime. my heart goes out to all the victims and their families as they struggle to understand what has happened over the last week. san francisco general hospital is the only trauma center in the city and county of san francisco and in the u.s. it is, in fact, i think, the best trauma center in the united states. we stand ready 24/7 to care for any injured patient in the city and county of san francisco. we also at general hospital are caring for uninsured and underinsured people who come in after injured. we also represent -- i also represent thousands of dedicated physicians, surgeons, nurses, administration and therapists who care for the hundreds of thousands of patients who come to our hospital. i have dedicated my life to providing care for injured patients in our community. it is truly a team effort to provide care for the victims of vie lertctionv crime. we rely heavily on our many trained professionals 20 help us do our work each day. after persons injured due to

shooting after the scene, people go there, public firefighters and servants. the trauma surgeons, emergency physicians anesthesiologists, orthopedic surgeons, nurses, therapists and many, many others who come to help us work on the patient. and we do this for every single person who is injured. we bring all the resources there. we can to make sure we can save as many people as we can each day. the reality and sadness is we may save many, but we can't save everyone. over the years i have seen massive increase in the fire power witnesses before you today. these guns are more powerful and destruction are profound. from ak-47s, other assault-style weapons, hand gun, extended clips, hollow point bullets, black talon weapons, bullets and other things like that, i've seen them and the work that -- the problems they cause each day. the larger weapons create absolute devastation in the

victims. when they strike a victim, it's like a bomb going off. i struggle with all the dedicated team members to save their lives as it's real a a battle against life and death. sometimes they have overwhelming mortal wounds and i cannot save them. we save a lot, but we can't save everyone. they have massive chest, abdominal, leg, head wounds that become -- that are the consequences of these large weapons in froth of you. -- front of you. they are the victims, but their families that are also injured when or have problems after the shooting. when a victim dies it leaves a hole in the family. they can't ever forget the devastated mothers, father's, sisters, brothers, that are struggling with loss. the way of a mother is unique sound as she screams, my baby is dead, my baby is dead. * wail it is a terrible sound, i wish i would have to never hear it

again. part of the process of making sure these lethal weapons are off the street. if we save the patient, they have to deal with many operations, icu care, post tau matt he -- posttraumatic stress. head injuries, disfiguring operations and long-term care and many, many other serious problems. we cannot forget the physical scars, but there's also emotional scars after they are injured. at san francisco general hospital a number of gunshot wounds has declined in recent years. in 2007 we cared for 381 shooting victims in our emergency department. 2011, the last year we have data on, that number is now 182 shooting victims. while this is a substantial drop, i submit to you that one is too many. these numbers represent the patients who are transported to the hospital, not the victims who died at the scene or do not come in for care.

many people are killed from homicides, but suicide taking one's life with weapons is much more common in the united states. it is a silent killer since more than twice as many people die of suicide than homicide historically in the united states. there is an hep dim i can of violent crime committed with guns and is a serious public health problem that we must confront head on. * it is incidents like this past week bring these terrible crimes out in the public, but the reality is people are killed every day in this country with weapons that permanently change the lives of the families that they are with. in conclusion, i would like to thank the mayor for inviting me out to stand with supervisor cohen, police chief sur, to support sensible gun control. the trauma center stands ready to care for victims. any initiative that can reduce guns in my opinion will make the streets and the cities and

counties -- cities like san francisco a much safer place to live. i thank you for your time this morning. >> thank you, doctor. today we're focused on ammunition and immediate interruption in the behavior that law enforcement advises us and sees every day that leads to more violence. in the weeks and months to come, the board and the mayor's office will be introducing both more ideas and legislation and resolutions to support federal and state efforts in the same direction. at the same time, we'll also be introducing through our budget support for an ongoing organizing in our community to support nonlaw enforcement efforts to reduce violence, whether it's education, social services, housing, none of that escapes us as to their link in efforts to reduce violence in our society. with that i want to thank

everybody for coming today. and i would ask everyone in san francisco, if not the whole region and the state, to please join us in a national moment of silence that will occur tomorrow morning east coast time, it will be 9:30 a.m., and here in san francisco it will be 6:30 a.m. for a national moment of silence to remember all the victims in sandy hook. of course, at the same time, remember all the victims at our own locally it victims of gun violence. and before and after this moment of silence we will be active doing the things we need to do to reduce violence in our city. thank you.